If they are going to happen, scandals are most often revealed during a president’s second term, and President Obama’s administration certainly seems to fit that mode.

First there was “Operation Fast and Furious,” in which the administration allowed thousands of military-style semi-automatic rifles to “walk” across the border into the hands of Mexican drug gangs. Since then, several of those guns have turned up at crime scenes, including one in which U.S. border agent Brian Terry was killed[2].

Then there was the administration’s decision to merely stop enforcing DOMA – the Defense of Marriage Act, a clear violation of the president’s duty to see that the nation’s duly-passed laws are enforced.

Now, along comes a spate of scandals – one involving the IRS’s targeting of conservative, “patriot” groups seeking tax-exempt status; one involving the Department of Justice‘s illegal tapping of nearly two dozen phone lines of Associated Press reporters; and the scandal surrounding the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, leading to the death of the first U.S. ambassador in a generation, which was proceeded by a bogus narrative put out by the White House (‘the attack was response to an anti-Muslim video, not a pre-mediated attack by a terrorist organization).

So much scandal, so little time – left

You’ve got to hand it to Obama – he’s managed to squeeze in a near-record among of scandals in a relatively short time (four years). But in sum, they are prime examples of just how little respect this president has for our country’s founding heritage and principles.

In opening remarks before his committee began probing the IRS’s actions, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., essentially declared the nation’s tax system “is rotten at the core” and must be uprooted.

“Trimming a few branches will not solve the problem when the roots of the tree have gone rotten,” Camp said. “Under this administration, the IRS[3] has abused its power to tax and destroyed the faith of the American people” in the income tax system.

During the hearing, Camp made additional observations – all of them spot-on.

“The reality is, this is not a personnel problem. This is a problem of the IRS being too large, too powerful, too intrusive and too abusive of honest, hardworking taxpayers,” he said.

“This appears to be just the latest example of a culture of cover-ups[4] and political intimidation in this administration,” Camp continued. “It seems like the truth is hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election.”

In a separate interview with CNBC, Camp said:

“The scale of it and the length of time, this was a pattern. This was a culture of discrimination where it was OK to go after conservative groups. [But] progressive groups seemed to find the process just worked OK for them. That’s what’s troubling.”

Something big has shifted

Syndicated columnist Peggy Noonan describes what is currently going on in Washington “the worst Washington scandal since Watergate”:

The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the administration’s credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don’t look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone. Something big has shifted. The standing of the administration has changed.

Obama has always been opposed – despised, even – by conservatives and most libertarians. But he is even beginning to lose members of his own party because his administration is so arrogantly dismissive of the Constitution and so brazenly dishonest. Even progressives are beginning to understand that they, too, will suffer if the country can’t survive this wave of Obama-induced corruption.